Gayle E Pitman

Evelyn Hooker had an opportunity to pursue her education, unusual for a poor girl of her time (1920s). She had all these interesting connections to points of history that influenced the trajectory her career like trying to go to college right when the 19th amendment had been ratified, she was studying in Berlin during Kristallnacht, asking for grants for her groundbreaking study from the NIH during the Mccarthy era. Hooker's groundbreaking research compared results of gay men and straight men taking Rorschach tests and two other major psychological indicators. After scoring the tests, she got cross coders to score that were experts on those tests and they found no difference between those who were gay and those who were straight. This set the groundwork for removing homosexuality as a psychological condition and getting it removed from the DSM. Her findings help fuel research behind the gay rights movements.
Poems pepper the text.
A fascinating life, a readable story.… (mere)